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One more day..

..until we all stop talking about (or at least see it greatly reduced in convos) American politics for at least two years (the Congressional midterms come up then).

An interesting election campaign to watch. National polls are close or tied – though they’ve trended back towards Obama.. and he holds leads in most of the critical swing state polls that have been taken, indicating he should win re-election. Republican supporters however, are just as vehement that Romney will win.. and that the polls are all too slanted towards Democratic voters – a curiosity I’ve never seen here in Canada – this obsession with what voter sample regarding political parties is.

I also appreciate the fact we have a federal non-partisan body in Elections Canada who runs the elections.. not having fifty different states doing it (or in our case provinces and territories) in their own manner, and having partisan officials and legislatures try to gerrymander and manipulate voting times so that it makes it harder for the other party and candidate to win.

That went out of style up here many long years ago, and if the US wanted to do anything to improve their voting system, that in my mind would be the first place to start – though it would take a constitutional amendment, and I know that won’t be likely with the bitter partisan divide down there right now. As an example, the state of Ohio has on their ballot a proposal to create a non-partisan independent commission to run elections and redistrict ridings, rather then the legislature and governor’s officials. That is apparently losing in public opinion polling by more then 10%; apparently both Republican and Democratic voters wish to reserve the right to gerrymander and tinker with election voting times and methods. I find that a symptom of their fierce bitterness with one another, that won’t aid or help their democracy.